The fight to protect public waters and aquifers

Everyplace one travels people are found fighting to protect aquifers and public waters. I have been traveling through Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

Just as Minnesotans are fighting to protect our streams, rivers, lakes and aquifers from peat mining in the Big Bog and United States Steel's Minntac dumping, people in Michigan are fighting to protect the White River--- another beautiful little trout stream very similar to the Dark River.

The threat to the White River comes from Nestle Corporation which wants to begin to bottle water to sell from the head waters of the White River... and people are mad as hell and fighting back.

Anything to make a profit and the heck with people and the environment. Such is what comes from "free markets" and capitalism.

One of the biggest scams going is the bottled water industry which uses the fact that many of our waters are now contaminated in order to scare people into buying water which we have always considered abundant and free.

Water is life when you think about it; yet our sources of fresh water are being destroyed by corporations in quest of super-profits--- only to have other corporations take advantage of this contamination of our waters.

What might be the next "commodity" to be bought and sold that we now take for granted? The air we breathe? Far fetched? Not when you consider that it wasn't all that long ago that people would never have believed that anyone would be able to sell water for as much as gasoline.

At some point people are going to have to ask the question what price society has to pay in order for a small group of multi-national corporations to profit.

International Water Day is coming up in March... it is time to create public awareness about water... about life. And, it is time to educate about the true nature of capitalism... how can any system that pollutes the air and water and destroys ecosystems be anything but a dying and moribund system?